Monday, April 9, 2018

Congressman Introduces Bill to Return to the Gold Standard

Congressman Alex Mooney (R-WV) has just made himself the most important member of Congress.

He has introduced legislation “to define the dollar as a fixed weight of gold.”

In the bill, Mooney explains how the purchasing power of the dollar has eroded drastically ever since the gold standard was abolished.

The United States dollar has lost 30 percent of its purchasing power since 2000, and 96 percent of its purchasing power since the end of the gold standard in 1913. Under the Federal Reserve’s two percent inflation objective, the dollar loses half of its purchasing power every generation, or 35 years

Mooney goes on to describe the advantages of a link to gold:

The gold standard puts control of the money supply with the market instead of the Federal Reserve. The gold standard means legal tender defined by and convertible into a certain quantity of gold. Under the gold standard through 1913, the United States economy grew at an annual average of four percent, one-third larger than the growth rate since then and twice the level since 2000

Of course, the re-establishment of a gold standard is only a distant hope at this time but it is good to see this type of agitation in Congress and it is good to keep the idea of a gold standard alive among the populous.

Gold is a metal which has played a particularly prominent role in the history of coins, money and currencies. For around two-and-a-half thousand years, gold coins were an important part of the monetary systems of nearly all states, and gold continues to play an important role as a reserve asset to this today.

To shed more light on the huge significance of gold for currencies, the Bundesbank is hosting a one-day conference in Frankfurt am Main at which distinguished experts will report on major gold currencies from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern era, amongst other topics. Speakers will also discuss the processing of gold and offer insights into the world of international gold trading and monetary policy under the gold standard.

Long-term historical developments are key to understanding how Germany’s gold reserves came into being after the end of World War II. The Bundesbank is responsible for managing and storing Germany’s gold reserves. At the end of 2017, this gold had a value of €117 billion and accounted for 70% of the Bundesbank’s reserve assets. Weighing in at 3,374 tonnes, Germany’s gold reserves are the second largest worldwide, after those of the United States.

The US Coinage Act of April 2, 1792, Statutes at Large, I, 246, forever set and immutably fixed the standard dollar of silver as a weight of fine silver equal to 371.25 grains (0.7734 troy ounce or 24.0565 grams).

The Act to Devalue the Subsidiary Silver Coinage of February 21, 1853, Statutes at Large, X, 160 (as amended by the Act of February 12, 1873, XVII Stat. 424), reduced the weights of the dime, quarter dollar, and half dollar to 173.61 grains (0.3617 troy ounce), 86.805 grains (0.1808 troy ounce), and 34.722 grains (0.07324 troy ounce), respectively, and made them legal tender to $10.00 only.

The Gold Standard Act of March 14, 1900, Statutes at Large, XXI, 45, defines a "dollar of gold" as a weight of fine gold (24 karat) of 23.22 grains (0.048375 troy ounce or 1.5046 grams).

United States law at 12 USC 411 defines Federal Reserve notes as "obligations." At common law, debts can only be paid by money, which constitutionally (US Constitution, Article I, Sec. 10) and at common law can only mean gold and silver.

Too bad something like this can't be slipped covertly into a bill, like all the other pork that gets secretly tacked onto bills. Seriously, if they can slip things like subsidies for certain industries, money for bridges to nowhere, etc., then why can't they insert language for a Gold Standard into a bill at the last minute? For once, "finding out what's in the bill after it's passed" would yield a pleasant surprise, instead of grief and horror.